A black bear has been wandering the hills and valleys of northern Illinois for the past few weeks. It has been a topic of much conversation. I’ve posted pictures of bears on Facebook, including one of a bear sitting patiently at a picnic table. One of my fellow Green Bay Packers fans suggests that “Our superior defense kicked Da Bear out of Green Bay.”

I’ve read that the bear is most likely a young male looking for a mate. He’s wandered off course, probably from Wisconsin. Bears are common in much of North America, but by the 1870s they’d been hunted to extinction in Illinois.

Our bear, which is so popular he even has a Twitter account, isn’t causing any problems, other than muddy paw prints on a garage door and a couple of tipped-over bird feeders.

He’s more afraid of us than we are of him. He hasn’t hurt anyone and wants to get away from people. The official state policy is to leave him alone. The General Assembly has passed a law protecting bears, wolves and cougars, none of which are common in Illinois.

But that’s not good enough for my small-government friend Ted Biondo. The Winnebago County Board Republican is a retired rocket scientist (really!) and a budget watchdog who analyzes spending by local governments. On Facebook, Ted regularly rails against anything and everything the big-spending Democrats do. He’s always going on about unnecessary laws and government waste. Much of the time I agree with him.

So, imagine my shock and awe when I read Sunday’s reprinted blog post by the same Ted Biondo, demanding a big government solution to a bear problem that does not exist. From reading it, I concluded that Ted thinks the Bear army is rolling into Illinois in Humvees and tanks to establish the Animals’ Republic of All Creatures Great And Small.

Biondo is certainly alarmed. He seems to think the General Assembly aims to protect rare critters at the expense of people. They can wander at will from jurisdiction to jurisdiction throughout the state, and millions of people will be at risk. Oh, the humanity!

“The county where the animal is first sighted should take a proactive stance to protect not only their residents, but the residents of adjacent counties to stop the animal from just lumbering along its way until an imminent threat occurs,” warns Biondo, who then suggests elaborate bureaucratic procedures he wants local governments to waste time putting in place to protect people from “Da Bear.”

So, Biondo was against big government before he was for it, to fix something that isn’t broken.

This is why government grows at all levels, under both Republicans and Democrats. It’s just too tempting for people in positions of power to use government to make people see things their way. And so it grows, costing more and more money, all of which comes from our shrinking pocketbooks.

There’s an imminent threat to people, but it’s not from our bear. It’s from people. Humans are the dangerous animals who kill and maim people and other animals with mind-numbing regularity. They alone among the animals have the brain capacity to choose whether or not to kill. People have spent thousands of years making killing into a high art. They use a wide variety of guns, bombs, knives, fists and motor vehicles.

Ted is a champion when it comes to scrutinizing local government budgets with a fine-tooth comb. But please, let’s not use the government to protect us from a lone bear with a Twitter account.